


ONCE IN A BLUE

by the_myth_of_winter



Category: Violet Evergarden (Anime)
Genre: Diary/Journal, Epistolary, Letters, Love Letters, M/M, One Shot, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:46:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24554095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_myth_of_winter/pseuds/the_myth_of_winter
Summary: Benedict finds a typewriter and tries writing letters (to himself) for the first time. References to the OVA (Eternity and the Auto-Memory Doll) included.
Relationships: Benedict Blue & Claudia Hodgins, Benedict Blue/Claudia Hodgins
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	ONCE IN A BLUE

h

Hello.

Is this thing working?

I have always seen the ghost writers use the typewriters but to actually sit down and work my fingers away at this is completely different from what I expected. Just trying to figure out how the keys are controlled already has me more exhausted than my longer delivery routes. I think I got the gist of it, at least.

Anyways, hi again. I guess I should properly start off this letter with an introduction. Even though this letter is addressed to myself. My name is Benedict Blue. I am a mail carrier working at CH Postal Company. I…think I am twenty-one years of age. I do not really remember the details of my birth. I vaguely had a little sister. The war changed a lot of people’s lives. My life, my childhood too. Time…had changed since then. Times are different now too, constantly changing. Plans for a radio tower are currently underway as I am writing this in my room. Right now, I am on a short break before I hit the streets again. Part of my job at the postal company includes covering the evening rounds of delivery. It is the time where people are back from their daytime work. It is when families are reunited at the dinner-table, it is when people are expecting letters from their loved ones.

It goes without saying that my job is to deliver happiness. It is a mantra I live by; no thanks to Violet Evergarden, one of the best ghost writers we have here. Someday, I might become the top mail carrier in Leiden, not to come across arrogant. But, until then, I am just a simple man who will go anywhere to deliver a letter to the doorstep of its rightful owner.

Alas, there goes the tolls of the clocktower. This is where I will have to end the letter, I suppose. A man must answer whenever duty calls. Tonight will be a warm and pleasant night, I think. I can almost smell it in the breeze. The crispness of a baguette being broken into half for eating. Or perhaps that is just my hunger knocking on the walls of my imagination.

I’m not sure how often I’ll get to write letters like this. To myself. I might write whenever I don’t have a package to deliver. I might write whenever I feel like it. I might forget… and write once in a blue moon. It might seem quite weird, but I’m getting used to this machine and it is somewhat fascinating in all frankness. I’m no gifted writer like Cattleya or Violet, however. I’ve spent more hours memorising district maps than dictionary entries. I may not have the words for everything, but maybe, I can learn. I can try.

Until next time,

Benedict Blue

* * *

Hey there.

It’s been a while, huh? A week, to be exact. The past seven days have surely been full of events, one happening right after the other. I think I might start to really dislike the word “teacher”. The number of times I have been called that by the little brat.

Who is that? Well, one fine day, as I was parking my old faithful bike outside the postal company, this orange-haired kid had the nerve to come up to me. It took me a while to figure out how the kid knew me.

Her name was Taylor. Her sister had been Violet’s assignment a good three years ago. So here she was, wanting to be a mail carrier for our postal company. Quite the ball of guts and zeal, that one. Despite her age, I have to admit that she does make for a refreshing change at the company’s atmosphere. Not that there was anything bad about the postal company. It was just somewhat nice. Taylor’s really close to Violet, which was to be expected. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Violet this… close to someone in the postal company. Sure, we are all friends that feel like one close-knit family. But for Violet to express herself so… humanly(?) ...in a manner that contradicted her usual matter-of-fact nature… it was quite a sight to behold. She somehow convinced Claudia to accept the little girl (did you know that she could not even read a slick of a letter?). And now, she is under Violet’s guidance… training to be a mail carrier. As I’m writing this, she is probably reading a book under Violet’s motherly…sisterly?... supervision.

Enough about Taylor. That child had the cheek to ask me, out of the blue, whether I had loved anyone, during one of our delivery routes. It was raining and we had gone to an apartment building on the classier side of town. Turns out, our recipient was a young lady who had been waiting to hear from someone she must have feelings for. There she was, twirling at the door, sunlight somehow filtering in through the clouded skies to fall on her face. Her fingers clutched so tightly onto the envelope; I had inwardly hoped that she would not clumsily rip everything to shreds. Her face was so evidently one of being in love. Whoever her lover was, their words were something that she could look forward to. Even on a rainy day.

As we strolled down the flights of stairs, Taylor had, without a doubt, a lot of things to say. Of course, it must have been quite the experience, witnessing a living romance right in front of you. For a child that young, it was natural that this girl would be curious. I told her love letters were quite common, especially among young people who were waiting to get married and settle down. Needless to say, it was love letters that catapulted Violet to her fame as an Auto Memory Doll. And as mail carriers, that precious feeling of making sure that we deliver these letters sealed with someone’s heart could not be replicated. It is constantly a feeling that is new, in spite of the fact that I have delivered at least a thousand love letters.

But experiencing love… is a vastly different thing altogether. That question from Taylor had struck in the blind and I had no idea how I should have responded to that. I mean, I am young. I do have desires and feelings. I too want love. But, what is love? Can we truly want something that we might not get close to knowing? I have liked girls…or at least, tried to like…in the past. But I have never really fallen in love with someone. No one else is reading this so I feel comfortable and bold enough to say that I am inexperienced with love. Perhaps, I am simply too busy as a mail carrier to have the opportunity of falling in love. Even Violet decided to become a Doll, in order to find out what the words “I love you” meant. Love surely drives one to do things never before imagined. I wonder if I’ll ever have someone write a love letter to me in this city. One can only dream.

Signing off,

Benedict Blue

* * *

Love, huh?

What is it? Can I even begin to explain it?

Maybe love is the ring of a doorbell. Maybe it is a swirl of cotton-candy enjoyed on streets of lamp-lit dusk. Maybe love is transferred between Dolls, from their gruelling cogs to textbooks scrawled by scholars past. Maybe love is packaged inside a postal company.

How do I put my finger on it? How should I even describe it?

Do I talk about the way he broods, surrounded by piles of contracts and invoices? Do I write about the way he smells, that very oddly specific musk of his – that combination of gentle masculinity and fatigued lavender? Or should I begin with his hair? That handsome flame full of thorns, that forest of tranquillity masking turquoise twins. His hands, weathered from the war zone?

Should he be portrayed as President? As Lieutenant Colonel? As… a kind and benevolent man? Fatherly to all the Dolls, brotherly to me? Is he… more than a brotherly figure to me? What kind of beginnings would be appropriate for a feeling such as this?

How do I explain the nights furrowing deep into his forehead? The way my heels seem to soften when I see an additional wrinkle. The way my runs feel fleeting when I catch an unshaven smile from his side of the office. The way I would wrangle him out of his chair, just to eat some takeaway lunch at the pantry. How his lips become stained in noodles and sauce. How…

I am overcome by an urge. No, it is not an urge. It is far more irrational than an urge. Could it be… a desire? Is it a desire? I want to devour him, but not in the way you would imagine. It is not cannibalism I am suggesting or proposing. It is a different sort of ravenousness. Those lips… they possess such powers of magnetism… It is as if I had gazed upon the blinding face of a blue moon. To hold, to capture, to encompass such a moment into a letter…

How did Violet manage that with the princess? How would Cattleya write it? She might use a fancy word, that pretentious woman. Something French, perhaps. Maybe I shall ask Erica tomorrow. I know she reads plenty of romance novels (it is an open secret in the company). Better to ask an aspiring novelist, after all.

Deep in my thoughts,

Benedict Blue

* * *

I finally remembered to approach Erica about my question. She seemed a little flustered to have been confronted about such an issue, but she eventually came to me in the midst of lunch with a word.

 _Basorexia_. The sudden desire to kiss. The word felt like a coin sliding under my tongue, newly minted. It did not have the lustre I expected, that romantic fiddling of syllables. Yet, it clicked for me. Like sealing wax coagulating on parchment. To kiss…

…is to dream. Everyone knows how significant a first kiss is to a person. Just as how life can only be lived once, a first kiss will be eternally special and different from any other kiss. To tell you the truth (a rather strange phrase to write in a letter addressed to yourself), I have yet to experience my first kiss. Yes, yes, I know what people might start to think when they found out. I am a little embarrassed, of course. You know, I was never the most popular kid on the block. And there are definitely guys way more dashing than I am out there, with fuller pockets. I know of the rumours too. How I seem to be running after the girls, and failing.

In my line of work, I am always running. Maybe I’m running away from myself… In a sense, I am perhaps also running away from that elusive first kiss. But in my dreams, that kiss is where I am always running towards, at the end of each day. When the sun sets and the shutters start to go down, I am always going back to him. That constancy…

It’s weird. I see him almost every day, yet… Maybe that is why to dream of a kiss is a dangerous hope. One that brings an anxiety of an unknown strain into the room. One that makes me question if I truly know him. What if I only know a romanticized version of him? A first kiss can only happen between two people who have fallen in love. All the novels have written about this. All the plays have been staged about this. What if he is not the right one? How do you know if someone will become your first kiss?

Can one ever know?

Writing under the moonlight,

Benedict Blue

* * *

So, I got caught.

Writing. At a typewriter. By Violet.

Allow me to explain myself.

Things as of late have become more… advanced. Smoother, more efficient, are some words you could use to describe how the city has been like. In the same way, the postal company has seen a certain productivity of work. Which means that I get to have a bit more time to myself than before. It does help to have more physical hands around, like that young brat. I thought no one else was around. But clearly, I was wrong. Violet’s voice had seeped into the lounge out of the blue, curious to know what I was up to.

So, I lied.

In a sense. I told her about how I was treating this whole thing as a form of diary writing. I did not do it everyday but hey, I was committed to it! I could not lie to her about some things, though. I professed that I too struggled with the language of love. I did not know what was it that I was feeling. I did not know how to have the words. I did not know where to learn them.

“Write a letter to this person.”

That’s what she said. In that moment, I got so emotional. I was probably not able to think clearly. It seemed very ordinary for her to say it but yet, it felt…ground-breaking to me. When one works as a person who delivers letters to people, you sometimes forget that you can deliver a letter to someone of your own choosing.

So, I sat down with her, and watched her metallic fingers perform their craft.

She asked me if I wanted to sign my name. I did not. She silently understood. This person… As much as I wanted to write to him… I was afraid of revealing my feelings. In the place of my name, Violet had inserted “A Secret Admirer”. She told me that the title was a common signature which she had picked up from her assignments in the schools of the noble. Many young girls (and even guys) expressed their romance in such elite circles where public scrutiny was tighter than the reins of a horse. Violet then offered to be the messenger of this letter. She promised to protect my identity. At that moment in time, I have never felt more grateful to a friend.

I wonder how he will take the letter. I am too nervous and afraid to find out.

Can’t sleep,

B. B.

* * *

To My Secret Admirer,

I thought hard about what to say in response but I am not good with words. I am not good at dealing with situations like this. I was definitely caught by surprise when Violet handed me your letter. She did not tell me who you were, just to assure you. But she did tell me that you were someone within the company. Someone I treasure… Someone I was close to…

I tried to figure out who you were. But I really could not imagine who might have written such a letter. Which is why I am writing back to ask for a favour. I would like to meet you.

Not as a boss, but as a friend. I think it is only fair for me to acknowledge and respect your feelings. I cannot promise to return the same feelings but I will do my best to figure mine out.

Sincerely,

C. H.

* * *

Dear Claudia,

Tuesday, 8 p.m. At the archives.

b. b.


End file.
